Letters to Vera, by Vladimir Nabokov

[Elena]

The letters combine prosaic business arrangements with transcendent moments. Vera seems to have been his partner for both. I find the early letters from the young Nabokov more sympathetic, more lyrical, less self-aware than the later ones...many correctives in the early letters to the persona he presented to the American reading public. As a young man he was flattered to be considered the new Rilke. The dishonesty in the letters from 1937 is the turning point from the rare sensitive young man to the ambitious calculating, but still hugely talented, mature writer...